


Mooman Ingenuity

by Daxolotl



Series: More Time With You [1]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Crushes, F/F, Pre-Relationship, Secret Crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-29
Updated: 2018-10-29
Packaged: 2019-08-09 16:10:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16453100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Daxolotl/pseuds/Daxolotl
Summary: Somehow, no matter where they go, they find a way to get into trouble. Yaz wouldn't have it any other way.





	Mooman Ingenuity

**Author's Note:**

> _This is technically a prequel to "Crushes and Cheese Sandwiches", but it also works as a standalone piece!_

How is it that none of their travels could go peacefully? They'd just been trying to visit the biggest rose garden in the universe. They hadn't been trying to find an alien invasion conspiracy, but here they are, trapped in yet another underground base.

Yaz sighs and leans against a wall, watching the Doctor work, alongside Angstrom. Quite how they'd run into her again, she has no idea, but here they are.

Angstrom crosses her arms and wanders over, moving to stand next to Yaz as the Doctor approaches, clapping her hands together excitedly. Yaz finds herself smiling at the enthusiasm, despite the situation. The Doctor always manages to do that to her – make her smile when things are at their most dangerous.

"Right, Team. Can I call you a part of the team, Angstrom? Temporary Team. Squad." The Doctor pauses, a wide grin crossing her features. "Is this what Hashtag Squad Goals means? Are we a hashtag?!"

"Nah," Ryan says, as Yaz holds back her laughter.

"Oh." The Doctor's face falls. "Pity. Anyway! Team. Friends. Mates. Here's the plan."

Graham starts paying attention – by this point he's learnt to kind of ignore the start of the conversation since the Doctor has a tendency to get a little off-topic. Those parts are Yaz's favourite, personally – there's no way she's zoning out for them.

"Ryan, Graham, there are two conduit repeaters here. They'll enhance the signal we're going to broadcast, and make sure we've got enough power. They need to be put at specific points in the maintenance tunnels, but don't worry, we've got lockdowns in place so there's no way anything else can get inside."

"Now, hold on, why is it that we're the ones going out there? What'll you be doing?" Graham frowns.

"Yeah – why do we have to run around the maintenance tunnels with a bunch of conduit things?" 

The Doctor gestures behind her, pointing to an array of screens. "Angstrom needs to prepare the broadcast and she's the only one fluent with their language to use the keyboards, and I need to manually break my way into every single system on the planet to feed our own signal into it. Think trying to play an MP3 player through a tape recorder, but the tape recorder also has a vinyl record strapped to it."

"Oh. Right. Yeah, you're probably better at that than we'd be," Ryan agrees, and the Doctor beams. "…What about Yaz?"

"Oh, there's only two repeaters so it seems a waste to send three people to do that, and we need someone to open each airlock in turn when you get up to them on the cameras." The Doctor taps on a pair of the monitors. "Since she's my bezzie mate, she gets the job without the walking."

Yaz blinks in surprise as the Doctor slings an arm around her shoulders. "I'm your best mate?"

The Doctor beams. "Course! You're my favourite, you are."

Yaz grins widely, blushing and giving a half-wave to Ryan and Graham. She tries not to let it go to her head, but with their close proximity it's a little difficult. She feels like a disaster in motion, and can't stop herself from leaning against the Doctor slightly.

"Right. Job's a good 'un, off we go!" The Doctor lets go of Yaz, leaving her immediately noticing the absence, and surges into action.

Ryan and Graham grab the bulky conduit repeaters, grumbling but leaving through the airlock to work, and Yaz settles in, ready to open any airlocks that they'll need.

"So, how is it that in five years, the four of you look like you haven't aged a day?" Angstrom asks, after a few minutes of near-silent working except for the grumbles of the Doctor as she attempts to rewire a whole planet.

"That's, uh," Yaz flounders. "A really long story."

"Time machine," The Doctor says, twisting a wire with…is that a piece of her hair? "Ghost Monument."

"…maybe it's not a long story."

"No, really. How'd you _actually_ do it?" Angstrom stops her work for a moment, turning in her chair to look at the two of them. "Stasis modules? Expensive plastic surgery? Or are moomans just really long-lived?"

Yaz shrugs, opening an airlock for Graham and closing it behind him. "We saw you a few weeks ago from our perspective. Also, it's 'human', but I'm touched you remembered. Kind of."

"Also I'm not a mooman," the Doctor adds, squinting adorably at one of the wires.

Yaz stares, grinning, until she sees a flash of movement in the corner of her eye. Ryan taps on the security camera again, and Yaz mumbles a curse under her breath, opening the airlock. He gives a thumbs-up to the camera, and steps through.

Within ten minutes, they're both on their way back, through the airlocks safely, and Yaz has taken her freedom from watching the cameras as an opportunity to watch the Doctor instead, stepping over to hold a few wires as she works.

"Thanks, Yaz," she murmurs. "You've got good hands, Yaz, has anyone mentioned that? Soft hands. Useful hands, good at holding things."

Yaz's heart races at the comments, even though she knows this is just how the Doctor gets when she's distracted. It doesn't mean anything.

"Ooh, hold this," the Doctor adds, putting a wire between her fingers with no further ceremony. Case in point. "Almost done. Aaaand…" She takes the wire, her fingers brushing over Yaz's fingertips, and twists it together with something that looks suspiciously biological. There's a hum identical to the Microsoft Windows startup sound. "Alriiiight! That’s not bad for a two-thousand-year-old with no experience with this planet, right?" She holds a hand up for a high five, and Yaz grins and obliges.

There's an error noise. That is definitely an error noise. Yaz knows that sound anywhere.

"Oh nooooooo." The Doctor's face falls.

Angstrom says something the TARDIS refuses to translate. "The whole system's overloading even with the repeaters. The array's out of alignment, the whole thing's going to overload in fifteen minutes."

"Overload? That's…we can just fix it if that happens, right?" Yaz has a very bad feeling she knows the answer.

"Unless we all die when the oxygen generator shuts down, yeah," the Doctor responds, and that was exactly what Yaz was afraid the answer would be.

"A manual realignment of the array could stabilise it, but that's on the other side of the facility, past the lockdown, and it takes an hour to finish the reset under the best of circumstances."

The Doctor is already running around, grabbing wires and slinging them over her shoulder. "Does the best circumstance usually include me with a sonic screwdriver?" she asks, drawing the object in question and sticking it between her teeth in order to grab another spool of wire.

"Yz? Mmpn th merlkk", the Doctor says, standing heroically.

"…What?"

The Doctor spits out the sonic screwdriver and it lands on the floor with a clang. "Open the airlock? And then, uh, put the sonic back in my mouth?"

Yaz laughs, despite the imminent threat of death, and presses the button to open the airlock before stepping forwards, picking up the sonic screwdriver and lifting it to the Doctor's lips until she bites down on the Sheffield steel.

"Bck n a jffm!" she says brightly, and runs from the room.

There's silence, then, with Angstrom checking the readouts and Yaz opening airlocks for the Doctor's run across the complex. "…It's hard, isn't it?" Angstrom says, eventually.

Yaz frowns. "What is?"

"Loving someone who burns so much brighter than us."

Yaz feels the breath leaving her lungs, feels the refusal on her lips, the _we're just friends_ on the tip of her tongue. But they've got ten minutes to live, and the Doctor is racing towards danger without hesitation, again, to save their lives, again. She can't bring herself to say anything but the truth. "Yeah," she says. "But it's worth it."

"Every day," Angstrom agrees, softly.


End file.
